A Slight Delay

If you’re one of those people for whom the obituaries are essential reading (or the first part of the paper you go for), I think I may have found you the perfect website. It’s called The Music’s Over, and if you go in for music, obituaries, pop culture, or some combination of the three, it’s to die for. Okay, bad choice of words, but you get the idea.

The blog’s author has pretty catholic tastes, commemorating the passing of the famous (i.e. Buddy Miles), the obscure or quasi-mythical (Syd Barrett), the unfortunately forgotten (Mia Zapata), and those famous just as much for being dead as for their music (Kurt Cobain), among dozens of others. And this isn’t some slapdash, half-assed effort; the author–I keep referring to him as “the author” ’cause his name’s not listed on his site–has clearly done his homework. Hopefully Don McLean never sees The Music’s Over, or we’ll be subjected to a rewritten, 77-minute, CD-length version of “American Pie;” unless and until that day comes, enjoy the site.

This post is safe for work. See Mike Draw, not so much. It’s decidedly un-PC, warped, scatalogical, sacreligious, and seriously disturbed. Mind you, I mean each of those things, in this instance, as accolades. Mike Jacobsen has a sense of exactly how far to go; the humor doesn’t rely on shock value, which is probably a good thing (look what an over-reliance on shock value did to South Park over the long run, and you’ll see what I mean).

This isn’t “Family Circus.” Be thankful for that.

A companion piece of sorts to my last post on Idealist: I came across For A Good Cause today while looking for the graphic that accompanies the Idealist post. The last post on the blog, dated May 1, indicates that the blog’s author, Michelle Sands, was wrapping things up.

That’s actually a bit of a shame, because she has quite a bit to say to those looking to find work in the nonprofit sector, and the nonprofit culture in general. Her posts are insightful, and her blogroll has further great resources, related not only to NPO’s but also to PR. If any of this sounds useful to you, head over and have a look; based on the evidence, For A Good Cause deserves a longer run.

Torn Paige is the website of Paige Finkelman, who routinely blogs about technology, marketing, web communities, and the like. On the surface, that’s nothing special. The twist, though, is that unlike many of the blogs I’ve seen on these subjects–and if you’re paying attention, there’s oodles of them–hers is written in plain English. If, like me, you’re a layperson trying to simultaneously make sense of this stuff and also take advantage of it, that’s no small consideration.

Granted, this may not be everyone’s cup of chai. But if her beat is even of tangental interest to you, the blog itself is worth a quick read or three.